Perfect Cheesesteak: Takeout vs Pro Chef

I think I'm fairly positive

I can make a great cheesesteak,

kinda make 'em all the time at the house, so--

[Harold laughing]

[tapping grill]

[jazzy music]

[graphic beeping]

All right.

[paper crinkling]

I swear to God, if this is chopped cheese

it's gon' to be lit out boy.

Cheesesteaks in New York.

Oh this got onions in it.

They look all right.

You know, in New York, we try to do most cuisines,

but I think you gotta go to the originators,

and Philly's only an hour and a half away on the bus.

For me, I think what it comes down to

a great cheesesteak sandwich is the cut of beef,

the cheese, the bread,

and also onions have to be part of the equation.

I have four sandwiches in front of me.

I'm gonna pick out what I like out of all four

and create my own perfect cheesesteak sandwich.

[jazzy music]

This first one, it looks juicy.

My mouth is salivating, so that's a good sign.

[bread crunching]

That's classic, you know what I'm saying?

You can taste the beef, you can taste the onions,

the cheese sauce is pretty good.

Classic cheesesteak.

So the next one, it looks a little bit more hipster.

The meat is braised longer probably, it's delicious.

It tastes like hipster blood.

From what I know is they usually use sliced ribeye.

It has great marbling through it,

it's the part of the eye round of the beef

so it's the most tender.

It's like super thin,

we'll season pretty well with salt pepper,

and then, hot griddle, chopped up real fine.

This one is nice, it stays juicy too.

[bread crunching]

Bread is what kinda bread you really want.

A nice, hard outside, but it's a soft inside.

The onions is caramelized so it's soft.

The cheese is soft, the beef is soft,

so you want that outside crust of the bread

to give you that texture.

Number four, wow, this one look like a bodega roll.

[bread crunching]

This the most mild from the crew.

It's a little drier than the other ones.

All right, so I think this beef right here

gave the feeling of a great Philly cheesesteak sandwich.

It is moist, it is tender,

it's also seasoned pretty well.

The first one is chopped up a little bit finer.

They didn't wanna over cook it

so they really started chopping it up real quick.

This one is obviously sliced beef.

I've never really had a cheese steak that was sliced

and went straight into a sandwich like that.

I would eat at this place.

The only thing I don't really like is the bread,

it's a little too soggy for me.

I would rather have it this guy or this guy,

these type of hero rolls.

It's a bit softer.

It looks like it's hand rolled.

Not as uniform as these other ones, you know what I mean?

You wanna have this kind of like hoagie style

where the outside is hard, the inside is soft,

so not only can you toast it on the plancha,

but it can also hold up when you start biting into it.

What I'm really looking for is a whiz kind of a situation

where the cheese itself is molding into the meat,

and the bread, and also at the same time,

you can still see it.

First, and the second one really kind of took that on.

Oh, they melted the cheese on the bread.

So what happens is it only coats

the top part of the meat itself.

I mean, Velveeta is the way I would do it,

you know what I'm saying?

And just like season that up.

Velveeta is a quick cheese sauce that you can make.

We have some American cheese, Velveeta,

some milk and butter, you got cheese sauce.

And then the onions, the onions is key.

If you go to Pat's or Geno's in Philly,

you'll see a whole flat top full of onions,

and they're just taking and just putting it on there

so a classic cheesesteak would have a sauteed onion itself

to give it that little sweetness that you're gon' need,

but also kind of that bite to know

that there's onions in here.

One, two, and four are chopped, and this one is sliced.

The onions should be sweated, shouldn't be crispy,

should be sweated out.

And I think the beef needs the allium kinda sweetness

to offset it a little bit.

[Dan] Are there any other toppings

you would consider for this?

If we're doing a classic like these, no.

If you put peppers and onions

then it's a different sandwich, you know what I mean?

It's not a Philly cheesesteak kinda sandwich,

you know what I mean?

If you wanna elevate it,

then you make sure that the components are elevated.

You buy the best meat, you buy the best cheese,

you buy the best onions, you buy the best bread.

[Dan] What about sprinkles, and whipped cream,

things like that?

Yeah, [beep] you.

[Harold laughing]

I would not do that.

[Harold laughing]

So let's see what's goin' on in the fridge.

First thing that hits my eye,

these are a beautiful short rib here, right off the bone.

Amazing color.

This is nice also, this is Korean style, kalbi style ribeye.

Super thin sliced, it has great marbling in it also.

Can I do a combination?

[upbeat beat]

Yeah, we're gonna do a [beep] combo.

So I would really do at least like short rib

with the ribeye sliced.

You see the marbling on here too,

it's gonna be super tender also.

So this is also a ribeye.

It would be great to put 'em together

because they're all in the same region of the animal,

where there's not a lot of action,

so all that meat is very tender.

I'm gonna go ahead and make my cheese sauce myself,

so I'm gonna need to pick out best variety of cheeses.

Provolone.

That's a nice one for cheesesteak too,

provolone really has this amazing stretchability to it,

and it has great flavors.

I would do a mix between straight yellow American cheese,

is amazing, and I don't care what nobody say,

American cheese is best.

White American cheese is also great.

This is a hood classic.

This is what you do when you're in a pinch.

Water, Velveeta, microwave, that's it.

I'ma get started.

[upbeat beat]

I'm gonna get started with a little bit of butter,

'cause I wanna kinda give it some kind of fat

make a nice a little bit. We're gonna go ahead add,

this is about two ounces of Velveeta cheese.

It holds, making sure that the sauce doesn't break.

I'm also gonna add some milk just to slow down the cooking,

I'm gonna bring it down to a simmer.

Velveeta is gonna be kinda the base.

Velveeta, the base of all food.

I wanna see the viscosity.

And then the best part of this, that it's seasoned already,

[Harold gulping]

Oh yeah, that's childhood right there.

We're gonna go ahead and add

some of these cheeses one by one.

American cheese first, let me take a bite of it.

It has salt on it.

You gotta pay attention to that

when you're making the sauce.

Now I can't really describe American cheese,

you just gotta eat it.

This is white American, wow this a little bit more milder

so we can go a little bit heavy on this.

Look at the sauce now, it's really getting velvety, huh?

Now I'm adding provolone, a stretchable cheese,

it's also on the milder side.

For seasoning, the American cheese done be the one

that's gonna give you the flavor that you're looking for.

Provolone's just gonna give you the body.

If the sauce is too watery,

just gonna slide off of the meat itself.

Woof, talking about sauce is gonna stick.

Uh, look at that thing.

Uh, yeah.

I'ma give it one more provolone,

I'ma give it one each just for good luck.

That's how I like to cook, you know,

do things for good luck. And bring it back to the heat.

I had it off the heat the whole time.

I've used the residual heat of the pan

to create the viscosity.

You gotta pay attention to the heat,

and how you control the heat, all right?

We're gonna go ahead and taste,

and see where the seasoning is at.

Mhm.

Pinch salt, quick little crack like that.

That's it, baby, you in the game.

Look at you, look at you, look at that.

So what this is gonna do is when you pour into your steak

it's gonna stick right on it.

It's loose enough that it'll cover the beef,

it's loose enough that it'll go through the whole thing,

but it's not loose enough that you'll lose it.

So next we're gonna go ahead and set up

our cheesesteak station, right?

So you wanna make sure that you have

all your prep stuff ready to go.

Gonna go ahead and slice some of our short rib,

and then we're gonna go ahead and get our onions going too.

When you're slicing beef, you wanna go against the grain.

If you see the grains going this way,

you wanna make sure you wanna go head on 90 degree angle.

If you do cut it with the grain, it becomes chewy.

The reason why I'm slicing it before I'm cooking

is because I want it to cook the same time

as the ribeye, and the ribeye is pretty sliced thin.

So what I'm gonna do is

I'm gonna cook the short ribs first, chop it up,

and then I'm gonna cook the ribeye right next to it,

and then chop it up, and then mix it together,

and time it properly

where both of them are cooked at the same time.

Before I even throw the meat on there,

I'm gonna saute my onions.

So we're gonna go ahead and use Vidalia onions,

a sweeter onion.

Our cheese sauce is super savory,

which means it's a little bit salty,

and with our beef it's gonna have a lot of body to it.

So we're gonna use an onion

that's gonna be a little bit sweet

so you can cut through all of that,

and give our dish a balanced flavor profile.

I like that size.

The flat top is great because you can do multiple things

at the same time, and you can act like you're in a deli

and you're the deli guy.

[Dan] You want a deli guy hat?

Yes.

There you go man, In-N-Out.

[paper crinkling] There, and you gotta be like,

yo Unk, lemme get a chopped cheese,

you gotta do that, all right, go ahead.

[Dan] Yo, lemme get a chopped cheese.

Yo, what would you like?

[Dan] Chopped cheese.

I got your brother.

All right, cool.

[Harold laughing]

So we're gonna do the onions on this real quick,

a little salt, and a little cracked black pepper.

I still wanna have a little bit of bite to the onion,

it's almost translucent here.

I want no color on these, all right,

that's key, no color.

So I'm gonna go ahead and take 'em off.

[scraping grill]

[tapping grill]

Let them cool down.

All right, so I can choose bread next.

One thing I'm looking for for bread is, once again,

a little bit of a texture on the outside,

softness on the inside.

The bread that I chose, it is an Italian style roll.

The bodega bread, I'm very familiar with this bread.

I can make this nice and toasty.

This is gonna absorb all the cheese sauce,

it's also gonna hold it together well.

What I like to do is take a little bit of the tip off,

just to give it some kind of structured look.

Right in the middle of this bread,

wanna give it a little landing pad.

Drop a little bit of butter.

The butter should be bubbling like that.

What I like to do also, is just for fun,

take a little piece of butter,

then I like to just hit different spots of the bread.

Gonna create this kind of nutty flavor.

As you can tell I can fit the whole roll in here.

If you have an oven and you put this in the oven,

what's gonna happen is this outside is gonna get cooked too,

we're gonna get warmed up

and then the inside is going to get toasted,

and you're gonna have not what you want right now

is this kind of toasty inside, but still soft outside.

'Cause this bread, if you get it too hard,

it becomes kinda stale almost.

Now our bread is toasty toast.

Lay it down right here so we can build.

And then we're gonna go right into creating our sandwich.

[jazzy music]

We're gonna go ahead and take our meat,

we're gonna go ahead and season it first.

I'm gonna do the short ribs first,

because that's gonna take a little bit longer to cook

than the ribeye.

[cracking pepper]

[beef sizzling]

Creating a little bit of a mild reaction.

I don't wanna sear it too hard

because it's gonna overcook.

I want to cut the meat now on the griddle

because it will start cooking up faster.

[tapping grill]

We're gonna go ahead and drop our ribeye.

Little trigger trick.

[beef sizzling]

Pouring a little water just to steam it up a little bit

and slow the cooking process down.

I'm gonna go add our onions to cook it further.

Right next to each other.

Little oil, I'll go ahead and fold the onions into this.

The onions and steak are gonna fall in love with each other

and really get into each other's space.

I'm gonna taste too.

Mm, that's good, man.

I'm gonna put the bread back on, just to warm it up,

gonna put a little bit of butter, 'cause butter is love,

you know what I mean?

A little bit more salt on this thing.

Our sauce is ready, okay.

Gon' take a rag 'cause this thing is hot.

Take your meat situation, and go right, woo hoo hoo,

you know what I'm talking about, son?

We out here, yo.

I'ma open a bodega soon, uh, presto, woo boy.

At restaurants in Philly they take a offset spatula

and just put it spread over the top,

they don't even weigh it out.

What I'm really looking for is for the cheese

to cover the meat,

and it's incorporated throughout the sandwich,

and then I'm good.

If I put her into the bread first,

the bread would soak up the cheese,

and then the cheese will just disappear from it all.

Slip and drips, slip drip, you know what I mean?

Look at that.

Ah, ah, look at that, ah.

And then close it.

Oh boy, look at this, woo.

Seems like she ready, woo hoo.

Gonna give it a little sauce on the side,

if you wanna dip your sandwich after.

That's fine dining right there.

Stun, that is juicy.

[plate sliding across counter]

[upbeat beat]

I got my sandwich here, I got my favorite one from earlier.

I'm gonna go ahead and see how they pair up.

When I cooked mine and then I'm looking at theirs now,

I feel like maybe the way that they kept it moist

was they probably hit it with a little bit of chicken stock

while it was on the griddle.

I added a little bit of water,

if you seen that to get a steam situation.

But if I had chicken stock, that would've been great too,

that would've glazed the meat.

I'm gonna go ahead and take a bite.

[bread crunching]

Not bad, man.

You know what I mean?

[bread crunching]

Biting into it the second time, the bread works.

I was a hater earlier, it just bursts in your mouth.

I think I chose the right bread.

It really soaked in the cheese, the bread's not too hard

so when I bit into it, it gave it that softness,

that the moisture is still there.

It's toasted right here, and all the cheese

and all that juices from the meats

didn't really seep into this bread right here.

And if you're looking for a little bit of texture,

the toasty part is gonna give you that texture right there.

Earlier, I wanted to have a hard outside and a soft inside,

but I think this Italian style bread,

hoagie style is the way to go.

I think my cheese has a viscosity

that you're really looking for,

where it's not too clunky, but it's not too thinned out.

And that's what we're really looking for,

is the cheese to be fully integrated,

in every single bite it worked.

It's all over the meat,

it's in the sandwich, and it's juicy as hell.

And the meat melted, it's gone now,

it melted, it just melted.

So that combination of short rib and ribeye

was a great choice.

The short rib itself is giving me

the texture that I'm looking for.

And then the ribeye is giving me that melted fat.

Together combined, it just all kinda melts away

and disappears, and it's still really tender and moist.

The onions are there too,

I can still taste the onions, sweetness coming through.

Mixing it with the beef is a great idea

because it really creates the harmonious bite

that you're looking for,

letting the beef kinda mold into that allium flavor.

Going into the sandwich and then adding cheese to it

was the best way to attack it.

I felt like I did a great job making a Philly cheesesteak.

I wanted to show you how to make it in your crib,

make it for your loved ones.

They'll love you forever.

Wherever you are, build community,

build your tribe, and make sure you pull somebody up

behind you, South Bronx all day, baby.

[bell dinging]

You already know.

This is what dreams are made of, all right?

This was me fat boy style, 13 years old.

[Dan] A real quick demo of how that would look?

Yeah, you sure?

[beep] me, okay.

I hate you, Dan.

Oh.

Oh, oh my God, oh my goodness.

Oh my God, that was disgusting.